“Are you, um…” He cleared his throat. “After the other—”

  “We should start your sim.” I brushed past him and lifted the chamber’s lid. He exhaled but then started getting undressed. I set up his program, ignoring my resemblance to his virtual partner, and he got into the chamber.

  As I set up the equipment, I kept my chin down, as much to hide my face from the cameras as to avoid Aiden’s eyes. “I want to go back.”

  “I figured you would.” His voice was soft, barely audible, but the note of cockiness was present and accounted for.

  Pressing an electrode into place, I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Smug bastard.”

  Aiden chuckled. “I broke through your stubbornness. I’ve earned the right to be smug.”

  I tried not to laugh, but failed. “I suppose you have. Well played.” Turning more serious, I continued putting on the electrodes. “There are so many things I want to ask you.”

  Aiden glanced up at the bubble camera in the ceiling. “Best not to do it here.”

  I hesitated. “Meet you in the same place tonight?”

  He shook his head. “No. It’ll always be a different spot.”

  “They move that place around every night?”

  “No, but I never cross the tracks in the same place. That kind of pattern can get an investigator on your tail.”

  “Oh. How lovely.”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry. I know how to avoid being noticed.”

  You certainly know how to be noticed, too.

  “So, when and where?”

  “Meet me tonight,” he said. “Twenty hundred. Zone 8, Crossing 12.”

  The base of my spine prickled with apprehension and excitement. “I’ll be there.”

  * * * *

  I rode on the back of his bike, and the trip seemed much longer this time. We wound around old streets, between decaying buildings, and eventually parked around the back of the familiar skyscraper.

  Down the stairs. Across the abandoned parking garage. Down more stairs. Past the guards.

  And there we were. The air was hot, the music and pheromones alike making my head spin. This may as well have been my first time in here—the sensory onslaught was instantly overwhelming.

  Aiden took my hand. I thought he’d take me out onto the floor with everyone else, just like he had the first night, but instead, he led me away from the crowded lounge, past another guard, and into another hallway.

  When the thumping bass had diminished enough we could hear each other, I asked, “Where are we going?”

  He glanced back and grinned, the expression simultaneously unnerving and arousing. “Someplace more private.”

  We turned a corner, and my heart beat faster. The music had faded into the background, and now the sounds all around us were distinctly human. Rapid breathing. Soft moans. The occasional groan. Cursing.

  Strands of bare lightbulbs had been suspended from the ceiling, and sheets had been hung up as makeshift curtains, offering crude attempts at privacy, but the only thing they obscured was the identity of the people behind them. Silhouettes kissed and fucked. Pairs, trios, maybe more. Some were pressed so close together, I was sure they were just one person until a limb moved or a head tilted and the shape became two instead of one.

  Aiden took me all the way to the end of the row, to one of the curtained-off “rooms.” It was strange how I felt exposed and vulnerable here, a thin piece of cloth away from someone discovering us, and yet I also felt completely alone with him. Like we were the only two people in the universe even though I could hear others moving and murmuring all around us.

  A few cushions—mismatched but clean—had been left in here, and some blankets. Not luxurious, but certainly inviting.

  Standing across from me, not more than an arm’s length away, Aiden didn’t speak. He looked me up and down, and when our eyes met, I couldn’t remember how to breathe.

  He smiled. “I’m glad you came back.”

  “Me too.”

  Aiden reached for my waist, and I shivered as his fingertips grazed my suit. He leaned in, parting his lips, and my mouth watered. I’d craved his kiss since the last time, and I—

  At the last second, he dipped his head and kissed my neck instead.

  Oh. Fuck.

  The gentle scrape of his chin. The softness of his lips. The warmth of his breath. Gripping his shoulders for dear life, I closed my eyes and tilted my head farther. He explored every inch of flesh I didn’t think could possibly be so sensitive.

  “You wondered about the electrodes,” he murmured, his lips and voice brushing my neck. “Now you know.”

  All I could do was moan, let my head fall back, and let these delicious, alien sensations wash over me.

  “We’re both wearing too much.” He released me and stepped back, leaving my skin tingling and my heart pounding. “Take off your suit.” The words made my breath catch, and my heart almost stopped when he took the zipper pull beneath his own collar and started drawing it down.

  With unsteady hands, I did the same. Boots off. Gloves off. Suits off.

  Naked, I shivered—the air was simultaneously warm and cool on my skin.

  And the sight of Aiden took my breath away. I’d seen him naked a million times before, but always in the sterile, clinical environment of the simhouse. And I’d always been fully suited—definitely not completely naked, and hard, and shaking.

  Oh my God.

  He came closer. Just like when we’d stood against the pillar last time, before he’d given me that incredible orgasm, except there were no suits between us now. Just air that grew warmer as we stood close enough to touch.

  His hands snaked around to my lower back, drawing our bodies together. Being close to him with our suits dividing us was one thing. Now there was nothing. Just hot flesh against hot flesh. “I’ve been fantasizing about this since the day I met you.”

  I moistened my lips. “Have you?”

  “I have.” He leaned in closer. “From day one.”

  And now, finally, he kissed me. His lips were cool, but the rest of his mouth was warm, and his tongue expertly teased mine until my whole body was trembling just from the intensity of his long, lazy kiss.

  He broke away and touched his forehead to mine. “There are so many things I want to do to you.” His voice was a low growl, but there was a note of barely restrained desperation that made my knees tremble. “So many things you haven’t experienced, and I want to be the one who feels you experience them for the first time.”

  I couldn’t speak. I could hardly even stand anymore, and I was certain that at any moment my knees would give, and I’d melt to the floor at his feet.

  He wasn’t finished yet. “I want to suck your cock like I did the other night, and I want you to suck mine.”

  I gasped and gripped his shoulders tighter.

  “And more than anything,” he whispered, just letting his lips brush mine, “I want to know what you feel like and sound like when you come while I’m inside you.”

  “Oh God.”

  Aiden grinned against my lips. “Oh, you’ll be saying that a lot, I think.” He smothered any response I might have had with another kiss.

  When he broke away this time, he said, “Lie down.”

  I obeyed, and he joined me, sliding up next to me until we were touching from head to toe. The blankets and cushions were coarse compared to Aiden’s soft skin. Then he rolled on top of me, claiming my mouth in a deep kiss as our bodies made hot, unhindered contact. One kiss like that, and I was already losing it, already aroused beyond reason.

  He shifted his weight onto one arm and wrapped his other hand around my cock again. Then around both of our cocks, stroking them at the same time.

  He moved his hips back and forth, and the underside of his cock rubbed against the underside of mine. I held his shoulder and the back of his neck, my whole body straining from the exertion of being this close to the edge, driven this close to insanity.

  He screwed his eyes shut. His lips pulled into a grimace, and the cords stood out on his neck as he thrust his hips harder against mine. I could only imagine how he felt; myself, I was lost in the most amazing sensations. An impending orgasm beyond belief. A feverish warmth radiating from both of our bodies and mingling between us. Dizzy, breathless, delirious. I rode the edge, teetering precariously between holding on and letting go. This heat, this friction—it was all alien, and so amazing I could barely stand it.

  “Oh God. Don’t stop, Aiden. Please…don’t…”

  “I won’t,” he slurred, the two words barely intelligible. His body moved against mine, perspired against mine, fucked against mine, and I couldn’t hold back. I didn’t know why or how, but I thrust back against him, and his moans tangled with mine as we both shuddered against each other. Hot semen landed on my chest and stomach, and I didn’t know whose was whose, and I didn’t care.

  Aiden’s brow furrowed and lips parted. All around us, the air still thrummed with the music from the other side of the lounge. People moaned. Cried out. Laughed. Someone screamed, and for a moment, I was alarmed, but then the sound tapered to a helpless sob of pure ecstasy.

  In here, we were both panting and shaking, but otherwise silent.

  Finally, I caught my breath enough to speak. “That was…fucking unreal.”

  “It was.” Aiden kissed me gently. “And we haven’t even fucked yet.”

  My heart skipped. I’d known we hadn’t done it all yet, but in the wake of something so intense, the concept of something even more intense was incomprehensible. And tempting. So deliciously tempting.

  Aiden leaned over the pile of cushions and picked up a couple of towels. He handed me one.

  “Towels too?” I grinned. “They thought of everything, didn’t they?”

  Aiden chuckled as he cleaned himself off.

  “What do they do with these?” I asked. “I mean, if there’s a raid, can’t they use them to get DNA evidence?”

  “Every piece of cloth in this lounge has nanotech in it.” He set the towel aside. “Five minutes after making contact, every cell is destroyed. Leaves the DNA unrecognizable.”

  I took the towel away from my bare skin. “I beg your pardon?”

  “They’re harmless. Programmed specifically for this purpose—they won’t damage your skin. Don’t worry.”

  I gave the towel a wary look. Black market nanotech? Seriously? There weren’t many other options, though so I wiped my hand off with it. “Seems like a hell of a lot of trouble and expense.”

  “It is.” Aiden smiled. “But all things considered, I’d say it’s worth it.”

  “Fair point.” I tossed the towel aside and slid closer to him. As we wrapped up in each other and the blanket, the thought of microscopic robots cleaning up the fabric, zapping cells this close to my own flesh, was a little disconcerting, but since Aiden wasn’t bothered by it, I tried not to worry about it.

  “You all right?” he asked after a while.

  “Yeah. Just processing everything, I guess.”

  “It’s a lot to take in.”

  I nodded. “Yeah.” I paused. “Out there, in the rest of the lounge, I noticed there’s a lot more men. Almost no women.”

  “Not many women want to risk an unauthorized pregnancy.” He nodded in the direction of the lounge. “Most of the women who do come here are pregnant already.”

  “Really?”

  Another nod. “Safest way.” A sly, lopsided grin pulled up one corner of Aiden’s mouth. “That’s when a lot of them are insatiably horny anyway, so they come here with their husbands and…” A wave of the hand toward the lounge.

  “And you’ve been with them? With some of the women?”

  He watched his hand run up and down my forearm. “On occasion. But I’ve always liked men so much better.” He met my gaze. “It won’t be easy, you know. Going back.”

  “I don’t imagine it will be.”

  “Except it goes beyond the sex.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean you’ll realize now just how much distance there is between people. How cold life is without physical affection.” He touched my face. “On one hand, I guess it’s cruel to introduce someone to this. Break them out of their ignorance and show them what it’s like to truly”—he ran the backs of his fingers down the center of my chest—“feel someone.”

  “But you do it anyway?”

  He nodded slowly. “Because I think everyone deserves to taste this at least once. Even if you never get it again, you shouldn’t have to live your entire life without feeling someone else like this.”

  I touched his face. “I don’t think once is going to be enough.”

  Aiden’s lips pulled into a grin, and he turned his head to kiss my palm. “Once is never enough.”

  “Never?”

  “Never.” He held my gaze. “Will you come back?”

  “I can’t imagine anything that could keep me away now.”

  “Excellent.” Aiden grinned against my lips. Then he trailed light kisses along my jaw. “And next time,” he whispered in my ear, “I want to fuck you.”

  “You…” I shivered.

  “Yes.” He kissed below my jaw and started down my neck. “I want to hold you down, and I want to fuck you until you can’t take any more.” He planted a lingering kiss against my pulse. “Would you like that?”

  I only whimpered. Speaking was impossible now.

  “Think about that during your next sim,” he said with a grin in his voice. “Just imagine me grabbing on to your hips and fucking you until you understand exactly why sims don’t cut it for the rest of us anymore.”

  I bit my lip and squirmed beneath him. “I think I already understand.”

  “Just wait.” He raised his head and kissed me. “Just you wait.”

  Chapter 8

  I’d been to the wireless lounge twice now. The day after tomorrow, I was going back.

  And I couldn’t think of anything else.

  In the days since my second visit, my skin hadn’t stopped tingling. It was like my senses were constantly searching for Aiden’s body. Everywhere my suit covered felt raw and irritated from the constant pressure of the material and the absence of his gentle, eager touch.

  The air tasted different. Devoid of sweat and pheromones, cool to the point of empty and dead like the abandoned portions of the Old City. It was like I was taking in my own reality, the one I thought I’d known since I was a child, for the first time. And it didn’t make sense. It was the opposite of sensory overload. Senses that had been stimulated now ached for more. My ears were still ringing, but it was like they were scanning for the pounding music, not recovering from it.

  Sitting in the break room with my coworkers didn’t help. Hanging around the people I saw and talked to every day, sitting this far apart like we always did, I itched to be near Aiden again. Not just near him—stripped down to nothing but flesh and sweat.

  God, he was right. After getting that close to him, I realized now how far removed I was from those around me. Especially when I thought of how much closer Aiden and I could still get.

  “Next time,” I heard him whispering in my ear, “I want to fuck you.”

  I shivered.

  “You all right?” Lacey asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m good.” I rubbed my forehead with a gloved fingertip. “Just didn’t sleep well.”

  She cocked her head. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s—couple of quakes last night. That’s all.”

  “Really?” Graeme looked up from his tablet. “I didn’t feel a thing.”

  “Neither did I,” Lacey said.

  I refused to let myself shift or squirm. “Maybe I dreamed them. I don’t know. Just couldn’t sleep, I guess.”

  “You should see about a sedative,” Graeme said. “The wife has been taking them ever since the kids got old enough they didn’t need her waking up every couple hours. Works like a charm.”

  “I tried those once. Left me feeling like the walking dead. Seemed like that kind of defeated the purpose.”

  Lacey sipped her coffee. “They’ve got some new ones on the market these days. Not quite so harsh.”

  “Maybe they’re worth a try. I’ll look into it.”

  We all fell silent, scrolling through the morning news on our tablets while we drank our coffee. It didn’t take long at all for an article on wireless sex to catch my eye. Seemed like there was always one or two of those on any given day. Usually about the lounges and how they needed to be shut down, or discussions of the criminal impulses that led people to break laws that existed for public health reasons. Today, there was an interview with a prisoner who’d been arrested during a raid a few months ago. His third offense, apparently. Not that the interview offered much beyond the reporter probing the man for grisly details about his “compulsions” and his “criminal disregard for the health of others.”

  “You guys see this?” I asked. “The interview with that three-time wireless offender?”

  “Ugh. Yes.” Lacey shuddered. “What a pervert.”

  “Why are people so hung up on wireless sex?” I casually reached for my coffee because my mouth was suddenly parched. “I don’t get it. I mean, with the penalties, and—”

  Graeme snorted. “For the same reason people do anything to excess. They’re idiots with no self-control.”

  “And people like what’s forbidden,” Lacey said. “Always have, always will.”

  “But hey,” Graeme said, “at least most of us have it together.”

  “Yeah, and after how many generations?” Lacey rolled her eyes. “I suppose there’s bound to be some stragglers who haven’t gotten the memo. Our species is a bunch of slow learners.”

  “That’s for sure,” Graeme said. “I mean, two hundred years ago, everyone knew things were fucked up but didn’t have a clue how to change it. We were born in the perfect era, when everything’s already fixed.”

  I cleared my throat. “Maybe they’re just curious.”

  Their heads snapped toward me, eyes wide.

  Lacey blinked. “Curious? About—”

  “About what they experience in a sim versus—”